


the ties that bind

by janie_tangerine



Category: Carrie (2013), Carrie - All Media Types, Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BUT WITH A TWIST ;), Bullying, Canon-Typical Behavior, F/F, Fluff, Handholding, I Tried, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Prom, Scars, Secret Relationship, Soulmates, Telekinesis, have my favorite soulmate trope with these two recipient ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20617784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: Now it makes sense why she and Tommy Ross realized they were better off as very good friends pretending to be dating while they look for their actual soulmate, they realized early on they couldn’t see each others’s scars and so that wasn’t it.Now —She’ll have to deal with the fact that Carrie White is her soulmate later, because Chris Hargensen is still throwing the damned tampons at her and the entire room is screamingplug it upand she’s there standing and unable to move and feeling like she’ll throw up and Carrie’s voice goes into a shriek as she screamshelp meall over again and fuck, it’s obviously period blood and it makes no sense she'd react like this but she is and it’s mixing with too much blood that no one else can see apparently —“Christ,” she shouts, shoving whoever was in between the two of them out of the way, then glares at Chris Hargensen, who at least shuts up — out of surprise, most probably, but better than nothing. “What the hell is wrong with you all?”





	the ties that bind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlsarewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/gifts).

> Hi dearest recipient! Sooo, I saw you like soulmate aus and I thought it could be a nice trope for these two and my personal favorite version of it was to be found on a tumblr post I ran into once and it went like _your soulmate is the only person who can see your scars_, and it looked pretty good for them, too, so... there we go? I basically went and made it a canon divergence from the get-go - the beginning is the same as the movie so the tags are there for it, but for the rest it's pretty much anything King would roast me for. ;)
> 
> Also: I had seen the movie ages ago but I'm way more familiar with book canon so I tried to make this fitting for both, I hope it works for you. <3 also, title from Bruce Springsteen and nothing belongs to me other than the divergence. /o\

1.

“What are you staring at?”

Sue barely hears Rachel over the screaming surrounding them and filling up the locker room. There’s steam surrounding them and white tampons are flying over her head and the heat feels scalding, and the two of them are the only two people who aren’t joining into screaming _plug it up_ after Chris Hargensen started it, and maybe in another world she’d have been dragged into it too, the force of it too strong to resist, and isn’t it easy to laugh at Carrie White anyway, is it, except that —

“She’s bleeding,” she replies, dumbfounded, and Rachel looks at her like she’s just lost it.

Tampons fly all over the room, and towels and sanitary napkins too —

Carrie White screams all over again, like she’s being slaughtered alive —

_Help me_ —

“Well, tell us something we don’t already know, genius,” Rachel says before stepping ahead and joining the party, except that —

_What you don’t know is that she’s bleeding _all over_, not just in between her damned legs_, Sue thinks, not moving, feeling like she just turned into stone, because now that she _looks_ at Carrie as she crashes on the ground and keeps on wailing _help me_, she can see blood flowing from what looks like holes in her wrists, and the entire towel looks covered with it around her chest except that _no one else seems to be seeing it_ —

And it’s not like Sue ever looked at Carrie while she was undressed or showering before, never mind that Carrie did take her precautions so people would see as little of her naked body as possible, but _now_ —

Well.

Now it _makes sense_ why she and Tommy Ross realized they were better off as very good friends pretending to be dating while they look for their actual soulmate, they realized early on they couldn’t see each others’s scars and so that wasn’t _it_.

Now —

She’ll have to deal with the fact that Carrie White is her soulmate _later_, because Chris Hargensen is still throwing the damned tampons at her and the entire room is screaming _plug it up_ and she’s there standing and unable to move and feeling like she’ll throw up and Carrie’s voice goes into a shriek as she screams _help me_ all over again and fuck, it’s obviously period blood and it makes no sense she'd react like _this _but she _is_ and it’s mixing with too much blood that no one else can see apparently —

“Christ,” she shouts, shoving whoever was in between the two of them out of the way, then glares at Chris Hargensen, who at least shuts up — out of surprise, most probably, but better than nothing. “What the _hell_ is wrong with you all?”

At that point, at least the _plug it up_ chant stops. Carrie is still crying, and _that_ hasn’t stopped, but at least _that_.

Chris Hargensen glares back at her.

“What,” she says, “you feeling sorry for her now, Snell?”

“How about you fuck off and let me handle this?”

They don’t _leave_, and they don’t back down, but they stop chanting at least. Sue kneels down on the ground, Carrie’s bloodied hand grasping her wrist.

“Hey,” she asks, her breath catching in her throat, “what’s wrong?”

“I’m dying,” Carrie whimpers, her voice suddenly dying down, and —

Wait. The blood Sue sees isn’t… well, _real_. The only real blood in here is —

“You’re not,” Sue shakes her head. “It’s — a period?”

Carrie blanches, shaking her head.

That’s when Sue realizes that she honestly has no idea of what the hell is going on.

Nor that they’re soulmates, most likely.

Well, she can’t exactly do anything like _this_ now, so she tries to help her sit up. “Come on,” she says, “we — can just get in there and I’ll explain you, just —”

“What the _hell_ is going on here?” Miss Desjardin says, bursting through the door, and Sue breathes out in relief the moment she sees the other girls cower.

Carrie’s hand is clutching at her wrist.

Sue is maybe a bit ashamed that she’s glad Miss Desjardin is throwing everyone out and that she’ll most likely help her out in a moment because she’s entirely out of her depth here, and she feels like she’ll throw up because her fingers are clutched around Carrie’s bloody fingers and Carrie is still looking up at her like she _doesn’t get it_.

Which she probably doesn’t.

Fuck.

_Fuck._

2.

They clear it up. Miss Desjardin is only too happy to dismiss them after they go to the principal’s and they’re excused for the rest of the day while they decide on what to do about Chris and the others.

Sue swallows bile as she sees Carrie clutching at her books, enveloped in those terrible blouses and long skirts that don’t flatter her at all that she always wears, she stares at how _now_ her white cuffs look covered in blood to _her_ and doesn’t touch the biggest elephant in the room.

For _now_, she tells Carrie to come with her to one of the bathrooms, explains her how to use a tampon, and when Carrie tells her that Ruth Gogan told her those things were used to blot out lipstick with a thin, shaking voice, Sue feels sicker for not having even _noticed_.

“Ruth is an asshole,” Sue finally says, “and no, you don’t use them for lipstick. It’s — more comfortable if you have to swim or run or so on, otherwise pads are fine, too.”

“Momma never said —” Carrie whispers and wait, _her mom never told her_ —, “is it sinful?”

What.

The.

Fresh.

Hell.

If Sue doesn’t throw up before this conversation is over, it’s going to be a miracle. Who the _hell_ tells their daughter that having your period is _sinful_?

Carrie looks up at her with large, wet eyes. She’s shorter than her, she looks like she’s about to faint and Sue still hasn’t told her —

“No,” she finally answers. “It happens to all girls, actually. It’s normal. Really. Miss Desjardin wasn’t lying about that. And you aren’t dying for that.”

“Oh,” Carrie says, a hand going to her stomach.

Sue thinks that maybe she should let this go, but —

But since she found out she’s felt like throwing up every other moment, and it would be unfair to _not_ tell her, except that there’s no damned way that she’ll know about _soulmates_ or think it’s a good thing if her damned mother _never told her that periods were a thing that existed_.

Then again, at least they’re alone and excused from school.

She has to do it now.

“Carrie, can I ask — do you have fresh wounds on your wrists?” She doesn’t ask about the rest. Not now.

“What? No,” Carrie shakes her head, once, twice.

Here it goes, then.

Sue looks down at her, trying to keep eye contact. “And what if I told you that’s what I see if I look at your hands?”

“But how could you if I don’t have them?”

Sue breathes in.

She hadn’t thought she’d confess to her soulmate in a fucking school bathroom.

Honestly, it’s _sad_.

“You know what,” she says, “we’re excused. We can just leave and get pancakes or something and I’ll tell you.”

“My mom says —”

“What, pancakes are bad, too? Is she ever going to know?”

Carrie stares at her. She seems to think about it. Then she gives Sue a tiny nod.

3.

“You’re pulling my leg,” Carrie says at once, the moment Sue has finished with her admittedly crappy explanation of how soulmates work.

“I swear I’m not,” Sue says, noticing that the light above them is going on and off, on and off —

“I can’t — this isn’t — this makes no sense, it can’t be, it’s all a joke to you, isn’t it?”

“No!”

Sue surprises herself by reaching out and grasping at Carrie’s wrist.

Carrie, who has been standing up, sits back down and turns dead silent.

“Oh,” she says, her voice barely audible. “It — it hurt before. I didn’t know that it was hurting but then you touched it and it didn’t anymore and I don’t — my mom said people talking about _this_ were —”

Then she blanches as she looks up at Sue and tears fall from her eyes.

“Does this mean we’re going to Hell?”

For a moment Sue wants to ask, _how can you ask with a straight face_.

Then she realizes that right, _right_, both of them are women, and she doubts Carrie’s mother might have forgotten to mention _that_ up until this point.

Thank fuck it always takes ages for people to bring pancakes in this diner, or they’d have a lot to explain to an eventual server right now.

She squeezes Carrie’s wrist, not letting it go. “No,” she says.

“But if — if we’re — then _I’m_ wrong, I’m all wrong —”

“No,” Sue keeps on, feeling like she’s not getting anywhere. “This isn’t — no one _decides_ it. It just _is_. It’s more common in between guys and girls, but it’s never _not_ happened in between… guys and guys or girls and girls. There’s nothing wrong with you. Or me.”

Carrie doesn’t seem too convinced, but looks up at her anyway, biting down on her lip, and then —

“So — you haven’t always had that scar on your nose?”

“… _What_?”

“On the bridge of your nose. It looks like a cut. It’s faded.”

Sue suddenly remembers the one time she argued with Chris in elementary school — Chris _did_ push her and she hit her nose against some swing in the school’s playground or _something_ and it just had a bruise and didn’t scar, but if Carrie’s seeing it like _that_ then… well. She does remember that it _hurt_ that Chris did that to her just because they argued once. Then they forgot about it, but —

“No,” she says. “I haven’t. But if you see it —”

“I always did,” Carrie whispers, her free hand wiping at her eyes.

“Does it _feel_ wrong? Don’t mind your mother,” Sue says.

Carrie thinks about it for a long, long time. She doesn’t move her wrist away.

“No,” she finally whispers. She shakes her head, slow, that hair of hers half-covering her face, and Sue wonders, _how would it look if she tied it back_ —

Oh, fuck it.

“Carrie,” Sue sighs, “in the showers. When they were — I saw that all over, not just your wrists.”

“… What?” Carrie’s voice is so low, it’s a miracle she can hear it.

“It’s not just your wrists. The entire upper part of the towel was soaked in red. Everywhere but your face and hands below the wrists was.”

Carrie’s throat moves up, down, up —

The lamp over them turns off and on again. The hell is wrong in this place, Sue thinks —

“You said,” Carrie says, finally, “that those are… scars you can only see because we get them when someone else hurts us, but not… necessarily for real?”

“Physically, yes,” Sue agrees. “And only your soulmate can see them. That’s how it works.”

_And I’ve just seen sixteen years’s worth of it_.

“For that matter,” she sighs, “your cuff is stained in red now.”

“I… don’t see it?”

“I do,” Sue says.

Carrie reaches for the apple juice she ordered before. Sue can see the waitress coming from the kitchen.

“I feel sick,” she says, sounding like she’ll cry again.

A moment later, the waitress leaves the plates in front of them. Carrie’s pancake is with strawberries and cream, Sue got peaches. They look good. Carrie’s fingers shake as she takes her fork.

“I — Mom only ever makes pie,” she says. “I kind of hate pie.”

This, Sue realizes, is the first thing she learns about Carrie White’s tastes in some eight years that they’ve been in the same school.

“Guess what,” Sue says, “never was much for pie myself. And no one blames you for feeling sick, but if your period does something to you, it’s making you hungry. Eat that, you won’t regret it.”

Carrie nods and takes a piece.

She smiles a bit as she swallows.

_She has a pretty smile_, Sue thinks, _when she bothers to show it_.

4.

Sue is just glad she told Miss Desjardin to not warn Carrie’s mom and that she’d get her home. In hindsight, Carrie insisting that it was fine to not get her mom and it being the only thing she said makes a lot of sense now.

They stop at a pharmacy, Sue buys Carrie a couple packs of pads because she doubts that even if she had any at home she could use them, and she wants to invite her over but when she asks Carrie shakes her head, tells her that her mom expects her at home for lunch and she’d be suspicious if she didn’t show up.

“But,” she says, sounding still like she barely even knows what she’s asking, “if — I could tell her we got partnered for a science project or something and that I’d have to go to your place in a couple of days?”

Oh. She sounds like she’s expecting Sue to laugh at her.

“Of course,” she says at once. “Good idea. In a couple of days, then?”

“All right,” Carrie says, smiling slightly, and Sue doesn’t realize they had been holding hands all along until she’s let hers drop and she’s gone towards her house.

5.

When she walks into Sue’s room two days later, Carrie has a new scar on her stomach. It’s bleeding through her modest, long-sleeved dress.

“So it doesn’t hurt just because —” Carrie starts, and then Sue tentatively touches it. Over the dress, of course, but —

“Oh,” Carrie says, “it… hurts less now.” She swallows. Her hands are shaking wildly. She opens her mouth, closes it —

“You want me to —” Sue starts, and Carrie nods, tentatively. She opens a couple of the buttons on the front, enough to show her stomach.

“What do you see?” Sue asks.

“Nothing,” Carrie says. “What do _you_ see?”

Sue sees a mess of a scar that is about to start bleeding _again_. “You’re — hurt,” she says, and moves her fingers over the stretch of pale, soft flesh.

“Oh,” Carrie sighs again. “It — it doesn’t anymore. You have warm hands.”

“… I just thought they were cold,” Sue says. They feel cold.

“They don’t feel like that,” she says breathlessly, and Sue keeps her hand there until the wound’s texture looks like scar tissue, not like fresh blood is about to spill from it.

They don’t say nothing for a while. Then —

“It — Mom says that all things that feel _good_ are sinful,” she admits. “But — this can’t be, can it?”

“You seem like you already know,” Sue half-smiles.

Carrie shrugs. “I just — I know she’s wrong about a lot of things. I — tried to make it better. But it never seems to work.”

Sue isn’t sure she gets it.

“What do you mean?”

Carrie doesn’t look at her when she talks about fighting her mother to take sewing classes and going off with the scouts and hiding from her that she showers with all of them and hiding her lipstick lest she ends up spending the night praying locked in the closet, and even if she tried to do all of that no one else seemed to take her more seriously for it, actually they laughed _more_.

When she’s done talking, Sue feels like she’s going to vomit. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she admits, knowing it’s worth shit.

“For — for what? I mean, you never… did anything.”

“No, but I also… never _did_ anything. I could have. And I let it happen.”

“_Everyone_ let it happen,” Carrie says sadly. She doesn’t seem angry.

“Yeah, and I haven’t noticed until _now_ that — that we are —”

“You’re doing something _now_, aren’t you?”

And she sounds _grateful_ of it, like she can’t believe it —

Sue doesn’t move her fingers if not for pressing circles into Carrie’s skin. When Carrie’s shaking fingertips touch her hair, she nods and tells her to go on, and — it feels good. It feels right. It feels _right_ the way it didn’t when she and Tommy tried it.

They don’t do anything more than that, but Sue figures that given _everything_, maybe taking it slow is the best course of action.

6.

The science project excuse holds up for a short while.

Chris Hargensen is _not_ calming her shit down after she gets kicked out of prom, and Sue isn’t getting any nicer looks thrown her way as she was the only one who _didn’t_ take part in Miss Desjardin’s punishment drill.

It’s a study appointment here and other small excuses there, but Sue has seen how Margaret White looks at her the few times their stares cross and she doesn’t like that _at all_.

This entire situation is getting to be too much.

She has to _tell_ someone, but she can’t tell her parents and she can’t tell _Carrie_ when she’s barely grasped that Sue isn’t out to pull her leg or make fun of her or —

She tells Tommy.

They’re in his car, after coming back from a pretend movie date, and he’s just told her that he sees scars on George Dawson’s palms.

“He _doesn’t_ have any,” Sue tells him.

“Well, then I guess it’s obvious why we’re better off friends, isn’t it?” He sounds like he has no problem with _that_.

Well then.

“What if I told you that Carrie White is _my_ soulmate?” She blurts, and then she tells him everything, and he whistles loudly after she stops talking.

“Good grief,” he says, “I’m _not_ ever complaining about whatever goes down when I approach the subject with him if anything goes awry.”

“Oh, stop it,” she laughs, but it’s nice to just — talk about it with someone who’s not doom and gloom about it. “I mean, George stares at you all the damned time anyway, I doubt anything would _go awry_.”

“He does _what_? Come on, he doesn’t.”

“He does,” Sue says, “and it doesn’t change that I don’t know what else to come up with to at least, I don’t know, _see her_ anymore, that her mother hates me, that I haven’t even told _my_ parents about it and that we haven’t even kissed once.”

“Woah, you _didn’t_?”

“And I actually _want to_,” Sue admits out loud for the first time, but the more she thinks about pressing her lips against Carrie’s, touching her hair as she does, maybe hold her waist, the more it feels _right_ and — she wants to, but it’s a miracle they’re barely touching in the first place now, and —

“How about I make you a solid, if things go well with George?”

“Enlighten me,” she says.

“Ask her to prom. Then you can go to a bar later and her mom won’t know now, will she?”

“Tommy, I don’t think —”

“Then you can tell her that I can bring her and you can go with George or _George_ can bring her and you can go with me — I guess if he agrees that one would be more likely —, so no one actually is the wiser.”

Sue stares at him. “You haven’t even _told_ him, how do you know he’d be down with it?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s going to go over well.” He smiles, and Sue thinks that in another life she’d have died for him to smile at her like that, and sincerely hopes George isn’t an idiot about it.

“Fine. But just if it goes over well and he agrees.”

“Ye of little faith,” Tommy says, and Sue laughs again and for a moment it feels like it might actually _work_.

— —

Thing is: it does. Tommy calls her three days later saying that George had also apparently known for a while and they were both too stupid to take the first step and of course he’s down with bringing Carrie to prom, and will she let him know soon?

She tells him of course.

7.

“… And he said they _would_?” Carrie asks her, eyes wide and mouth half-opened, her hands trembling around Sue’s.

“Sure. Tommy’s been pretending to date me for months so everyone expects us to go together and George said it’d be no problem going with you.”

She nods once. “But — no one would notice?”

“If we’re careful,” Sue nods. “Also, after then we can go to a diner or something, maybe leave earlier. What about it?”

Carrie seems to think about it, and at least she doesn’t look like she thinks it’s a joke, good thing _that_ —

“I would love to,” she breathes, finally, their fingers tangling together. Her hands are soft, but her fingertips are not, and Sue doesn’t need to look at them to know that the wounds on her wrists are scarring over. Slowly, but they are.

They’re behind some house where no one’s passing by. It’s five in the afternoon. No one is around.

Sue doesn’t even _think_ —

“Can I?” She asks, leaning in.

“Yes,” Carrie whispers back, and when their lips meet it feels _right_ and it’s all right that Carrie barely moves for the first few seconds, and then she realizes she’s supposed to kiss back, and her other hand touches Sue’s hair and her lips are soft and she kisses back like she’s only seen how this goes in PG romance movies, _if_ her mother ever let her see any, but it feels perfect anyway.

Sue tells her.

Carrie’s eyes seem to get a little brighter after that. Then she smiles slightly, says that maybe they should look for gowns, and then she says she won’t need to _buy_ one, just look for it.

They go looking for gowns the day after.

The day after _that_, Carrie’s smiling around a bruise on her cheek that only Sue can see, apparently.

But she doesn’t point it out when Carrie asks her for her measures.

“What for?” She asks.

“A surprise,” Carrie says, and leaves with that small, half-smile on her face again.

Sue lets her go and hopes that it won’t be anything her mother will find out.

8.

A few days later, just one before they were set to go _buy_ the prom dresses, she finds a package in her locker. It’s something soft, and there’s a card on it, reading _open it at home_ in Carrie’s handwriting.

Sue puts it in her backpack and doesn’t open it until she gets home.

Inside, there’s an almost perfect copy of the green dress she had eyed in the shop when she and Carrie went the first time — it’s not _true_ silk, but it’s good cloth regardless, soft and of a lovely shade of blue, the one she had liked on _another_ dress.

She tries it on, her fingers shaking. It fits perfectly.

So _that_’s why she asked her measures.

And she had no idea Carrie could actually _make_ dresses before —

She shakes her head, taking the dress off before she ends up ruining it or staining it or before her mom gets in and asks her questions — and she _should_ tell her parents, she _should_, she knows that they wouldn’t mind, but she won’t do it if she doesn’t breach the subject with Carrie before and right now it’s not really a good idea.

She takes off the dress carefully, hanging it in her closet, then closes it and wonders what did Carrie make for herself. She had seen her eyeing a pink gown that would have suited her nicely, but she hadn’t said anything about _buying_ it.

Well, prom is next week.

Not too long, right?

9.

When George shows up with Carrie on his arm, Sue sees that she was right — she _did_ sew herself a dress same as the pink one, except that this one is a vivid, bright red that looks amazing on her, barely showing her breasts. She has her hair pulled back, a bit of blush on her cheeks and her lips painted in a similar red, there’s no blood pouring out of the scars she sees on her chest, just above the slight bit of breast she’s showing, and it’s probably ridiculous that they _stare_ at each other while Tommy and George do the same for a good ten seconds before they realize that they should probably _not_ do it in the open.

Still, Sue takes the occasion when Tommy and George start discussing _something_ football-related very heatedly — she says that they should leave them to their issues with liking different teams and get a drink for themselves.

“You look beautiful,” she whispers, meaning it, as they take a couple Coke glasses from the table.

Carrie blushes, her cheeks getting redder, but it’s a nice, healthy flush.

“You, too,” she whispers.

She looks down at Carrie’s wrists.

“You know,” she says, “you’re not bleeding from anywhere right now.”

“Oh,” Carrie says, but she doesn’t sound _too_ surprised. “I guess telling my mom she couldn’t stop me from coming helped.”

She glances at Chris’s friends, who are glaring at them from the side.

Sue smirks at them. They all turn towards the other side.

“I think we should go back to our dates,” she says, loud enough that everyone else hears. Then, lower, “And maybe we can arrange for _some_ dance.”

Carrie blushes harder.

She asks Tommy, who immediately gets the gist and starts pretending to be drunker than he actually is before dragging her on the dancefloor, and George does the same at once — they play it carefully. She dances once with Tommy, who seems delighted at his ruse having worked out so far, then George says he’d like to dance with _her_ and Carrie moves to Tommy, still looking like she can’t believe this is happening to _her_, then they switch again and at the fourth song Sue does what Tommy told her to, whispering in her ear at the end of the previous song.

“Come on,” she says, loud, “you aren’t so chicken that you wouldn’t dance with George just because people would think it’s _not manly_, huh?”

“Of course _not_! George, do we want to hear this bullshit any longer?”

“Please,” George shouts back, “nothing is _too unmanly_ for either of us. I’ll take that dare,” he grins, and then he takes Tommy’s arm and Sue is quick to grab Carrie’s.

“See,” she says as the next song starts, “no one will think it’s for real now.”

Carrie nods, letting Sue lead her around on the dancefloor.

“But — it _is_, isn’t it?” She whispers, her hand tentatively cupping Sue’s hip.

“Of course it is,” Sue says, and if for a moment she puts her hand over the small of Carrie’s back, no one will probably care, so she does.

— —

No one says anything to them about the dance. They manage to sneak another one in with the same excuse before deciding to not push it, they carefully spend the rest of the time hanging out and occasionally talking to others who don’t mean to be asses and Carrie looks delighted at the compliments she gets when people learn she sewed _both_ their dresses.

It all goes well until the votes for prom king and queen are revealed and it turns out that Sue and Tommy have won it, and just by one vote over Carrie and George, which… is probably better because Carrie looks delighted of having come up _second_ and even happier for her, and while Sue suspects something is amiss because the voting being so close while Chris’s friends were giggling just before they said the results and then they stopped.

_Anyhow_. There’s no point in not pretending, so she smiles and bows and says thanks as she goes up on stage —

And then she hears a _noise_ from above like something being lowered down and suddenly there’s a crash behind them and someone screams _that’s blood_ and what the —

They turn their backs on the fake thrones on stage and see a pool of what looks and smells like animal blood pouring out from some kind of container at their backs, and when she looks up she notices an opening in the ceiling… but it was _right above their heads_.

And the thing fell _behind them_.

Before she can think any further on it, Miss Desjardin is ushering everyone out and saying that the feast is over and they’ll look into it, and Sue’s gown is miraculously not stained yet, so she runs down the stairs and notices that Carrie looks _very_ pensive, but then she shakes her head and heads towards the door as George ushers her out of the room.

Sue asks her if they’re still up for dinner. Carrie says yes.

10.

“I have to tell you something,” Carrie whispers as she cuts into her burger, not quite looking at her.

One of the wounds on her chest seems to have completely scarred over.

“Okay.” Sue eats one of the fries, careful to not stain the gown.

“That thing — it _was_ going to fall on you. I saw it.”

She looks back up at Sue. Then at her currently unused spoon.

Then the spoon lifts up into the air.

Then it falls back down.

Sue thinks of how the lights flickered over them in the locker room, or in the street when they kissed the first time.

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again —

“_You_ moved it?”

Carrie nods.

“It didn’t look good. It — _felt_ bad. I — I did this once, I think. I was… three, maybe four. I think I made stones fall from the sky because my mom was _angry_ at me. She — never let me forget it. But I couldn’t do it again, until… the locker room.”

Sue wants to vomit just _thinking_ about it.

“Then I started — doing it again. It felt like flexing a muscle, you know. It was weak, but it was _there_. I — I thought I wouldn’t use it, but — I saw that and I couldn’t not, and if we are — if _we are_, I can’t _not_ say it.”

Sue thinks of what would have happened if she hadn’t done it. Either her or Tommy could have been _hit_ with the thing, it was _heavy_, or gotten drenched in that, and she’s somewhat sure it wasn’t meant for _her_, not from the way Chris’s friends seemed disappointed at how _she_ and Tommy won the title —

“You don’t think I’m _wrong_, do you?” She asks, almost desperately, and Sue can imagine _who_ that comes from, and she shakes her head, her fingers shaking.

“For — I don’t even _know_ how you can do it, but — you do know that if that had actually fallen on us we could have died? That thing hitting any of us in the head might’ve done that. I should be thanking you in the first place, but — no. I don’t think you’re _wrong_.”

“Oh,” Carrie says, “you — there’s a scar on your cheek.”

Sue is pretty sure there _isn’t_.

“How does it look?”

“It’s — on your cheek. It looks like drops of blood.”

_Of course it does._ But her heart is still racing. If she _thinks_ about it she can feel her face burn in flames and her left cheek more than the right one —

Carrie’s hand touches her cheek.

It hurts a lot less, now that she does.

“Does — does it work?” She asks.

“Yes,” Sue says, trying to not cry and not feeling like eating anymore. “Do — listen, you can say no, but maybe if you want to talk about this, you could spend the night at my place? We — we could tell my parents in the morning. They’d be all right with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Sue replies, knowing they will. Carrie seems to consider it, obviously weighing cons and pros of what happens if she doesn’t go back home tonight, but then her lips painted still in bright red press against each other, and —

“Yes,” she says.

Just that, nothing else, and the light above them switches on and off, on and off, and then stays on.

Sue moves her hand under the table and Carrie immediately does the same, their fingers threading together. Carrie’s smiling slightly as she finishes her burger. The scar under her wrist feels old.

Later, when they leave the diner, there’s no one out.

“Damn,” Sue says, “of course Tommy drove off to that motel. We should walk, if it’s not too much —”

“Maybe I have another idea,” Carrie says, and then she grasps her hand again and suddenly the both of them are floating over the street, just a few inches, but enough that when Carrie moves ahead Sue flies behind her.

“You’re — _flying_ us to my place?”

“I can,” she shrugs. “I’ll stop if I feel someone passing by. Unless —”

“No,” Sue shakes her head. “I’d like it. Very much.”

Carrie nods back at her and she flies them towards her place, and —

Sue has barely wrapped her head around what the two of them are and now she has to figure _this_ out, too, but —

But damn it, it’s pretty cool, and she’ll think about everything else tomorrow including how to figure out what to do with Carrie’s mother and _her _parents and Chris Hargensen — for now she thinks that maybe they could do it outside of town, couldn’t they —

She smiles to herself.

She thinks she can’t wait for it. And from the way Carrie’s looking back at her, she thinks she’s of the same opinion.

End.


End file.
